The Slingbox Service Is Set to Wrap It Up in November 2022
Published on November 10, 2020
- Sling Media has announced the discontinuation of Slingbox in two years from now.
- The service is no longer relevant to the streaming field and what people want or need.
- A one-year guarantee still covers those who happen to buy the box from a shop.
If you’re still rocking a Slingbox, you have exactly two years to enjoy the service as ‘Sling Media’ announced that they are pulling the plug on November 2022. The reason for the discontinuation is that the company wants to free up resources for new products that are more relevant to the current status of the market. There will be no new Slingbox products, and the whole “TV streaming media” idea will be abandoned.
Since the servers will be taken offline, there will be nothing that you can do with the devices other than sending them for recycling. As for the apps, these will receive security and maintenance updates, but no new features will be added, obviously. Roku, Windows Mobile, and older Android versions are already gone.
Those who hold warranties may still feel covered for another year, but there will be no repair services offered by the company. While Slingbox has stopped shipping for a few years already, one could potentially find the device through unauthorized sellers, so this is why the warranty clarification is made.
Related: Best Sling TV Deals 2020: All the Offers You Can Get When You Subscribe
Slingbox was developed all the way back in 2002 by two sports fans who wanted to watch their favorite teams while traveling away from their home state. In 2005, they launched the product in the market for everyone to enjoy it. It is a TV streaming media system that encodes local video for transmission over the internet to a remote device.
If that sounds like covering a niche market, it is because this is exactly what it ended up being today. Those who want to watch something from media that is based afar can usually now do it through the official website and on-demand platforms. If region restrictions are a problem, VPNs are there to solve it. Thus, Slingbox has gradually faded into obscurity, and so maintaining the cloud infrastructure to support its operation doesn’t make much sense anymore.
What makes sense from a business perspective for ‘Sling Media’ is to focus more on the ‘Sling TV’ platform, which is actually doing quite well in a rather antagonistic market. This story underlines how quickly things move in the field and how a ground-breaking solution from fifteen years ago is almost comically irrelevant today.
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